Built By Hand

Our editors visited the Handmade Bicycle Show in Portland, OR and found a whole new world of bike products from the likes of Chris King, Independent Fabrications, Vanilla Bicycles and more.

Words by Bill Strickland; photos by Michael Frank

White Industries doesn’t make its singlespeed hubs by hand, of course, but it’s a vital supplier for all the talented builders focusing on the one-gear crowd. The latest innovation is a splined hub, which accepts matching splined gears that snug onto the hub and are secured into place with a lockring — no more opening your fingers up while chainwhipping the cog loose. There’s no price yet, but a standard eccentric rear hub is $160.

Gorgeous, work-of-art head badges are as plentiful as raindops in Portland winters, but Soulcraft came up with something unusual: A plate etched with each custom-built bike owner’s name, date the bike was finished, and serial number.

Franco Romano of Paragon Machine Works has been putting his scrap carbon pieces into a bucket for six years. Finally, he figured he had enough to build this Garbage Fiber bike, made completely with scraps, used, recycled and materials — right down to the SunTour Love components(a rare commuter group made for the Japanese market), and the cable-activated generator-powered bell.

Sweetpea co-founder and builder Natalie Ramsland made this 24-inch, $3,000 road bike not for a kid but for a woman who was well under 4-foot-11. The ex-messenger will build bikes for men, too, because, she says, “If they ask me, I assume they must really want one.”

In 1978 Chris King was a framebuilder — until his other little business took off and made him the pre-eminent name in headsets. He returns to frames with the Cielo, made of 953 steel, with a fork crown machined from stainless as well, and a svelte front: 1-1/8-inch headsets, with the skirts removed, are brazed onto a 1-inch-sized headtube, an arrangement that accepts a 1-1/8-inch steerer tube. It’s beautiful and trick, but King isn’t sure he’s back in the frame business. The farthest they’ve thought it out, says pr and marketing director Chris DiStefano, is that “we have a plan to have a plan.”

Employee-owned Independent Fabrication showed off a little with a carbon-and-ti BMX — which would probably cost somewhere around $8,000 if some grommet out there were rich and motivated. They also showed off a 953-tubed track frame with 953 lugs, a construction never before achieved (or maybe even tried). No price exists for this one.

Roark, an aerospace company based in Indianapolis with a bike nut for an owner, builds a few custom ti beauties on the side — about 600 custom, high-end bikes over the past 11 years. Besides a full-aero bike with S&S couplers, Roark also showed off this full-ti kids bike, equipped with SRAM’s 9-speed i-motion hub and Crank Bros. Candy click-ins with the springs stripped out to make platform pedals.

Monsere Designs is comprised of two guys who used to work for the EPA and decided their old race jerseys were too ugly to wear. They started a small-run, classic-design jersey company named for Jean-Pierre Monsere, who won road Worlds in 1970 (at the time the youngest rainbow-wearer ever) then never fulfilled his promise: He was tragically killed the next season when a car hit him.

There’s a five-year waiting list for a Vanilla built by founder Sacha White. Think handbuilt bikes are all granola and old-school tradition? Check out of the seat mast on this road version of the 2008 Speedvagen.

Ira Ryan is so cool he doesn’t know he has no idea he’s cool. This former bike messenger, winner of the sick Trans Iowa and San Francisco-to-Portland races, and member of the Rapha Continental team just thinks he’s making simple, understated bikes for commuting, town-riding, touring or road and cross racing. This commuting bike, made for a customer in Seattle, has a rack integrated right into the frame.